A Simple Thing by Kathleen McCleary

understand how anyone could think that tiki torches and leis and grilled pineapple on skewers would convince anyone they were in Hawaii and not standing in a soggy, cold, fog-soaked Seattle backyard.
    â€œYou can help with the homestead,” Bill said. He gave her muscular thigh a playful slap. “You were made to be a farm wife.”
    â€œMaybe,” Betty said, leaning over to take the cigarette from his mouth and take a drag on it herself. “But I don’t want to be a farm wife.” She drew in a deep breath. “I want to go back to work, Bill. I liked my job.”
    He raised both eyebrows. “Your secretary job? Working for the fat guy with the scotch bottle in his desk drawer?”
    â€œMr. Timmins is a smart man,” Betty said. “And he always treated me fairly.”
    â€œLook, honey.” Bill took the cigarette back and ground it out in the ashtray on the bedside table. “I make enough money. You don’t have to work. I know you’re disappointed about the baby, but maybe this means we should do something different. Maybe we should wait on the whole baby thing and explore our options.”
    â€œI don’t want to go to Alaska.”
    â€œI told you before we got married that I didn’t want to stay in Seattle.”
    â€œYou also told me you loved me and you’d do anything to make me happy. So let’s stay here. I can go back to work, even part-time.”
    â€œAnd how long are you thinking we’ll stay here?” Bill said.
    â€œI don’t know,” Betty said. “It depends. On your work, on kids, if we have them. On us and how happy we are here.”
    â€œI’m not happy pushing papers,” Bill said.
    Betty felt a stirring of unease then, something discordant. Bill loved her because she was strong, independent. But Bill also wanted her to do what he wanted.
    â€œDo you want to have a baby?” she said.
    She wanted a baby. She’d had a big family and a happy childhood and wanted to recreate that with Bill.
    â€œSure,” Bill said, but his eyes didn’t meet hers. “But you’re young—we’re young. We can wait.”
    â€œAnd go to Alaska?”
    â€œI don’t know.” He was exasperated now. “I just know I don’t want to spend my life sitting in a windowless office at Boeing.” He stood up, got dressed, and then went to the closet and found his bomber jacket.
    â€œI’m meeting some of the guys for a drink,” he said. “Don’t wait up.”
    Betty was just as proud and stubborn as he was. “I won’t,” she said.
    Â 
    â€œOh, pooh,” Bobbie said. “You don’t have to go to Alaska.”
    Betty and Bobbie were sitting on the back porch of their mother’s house, with gin and tonics in hand and feet up on the railing. Betty had walked over after Bill left, where she found Bobbie in the kitchen, fending off Grammy.
    â€œYour sister is ruining my pot roast,” Grammy said, when Betty arrived. “She’s pouring cups and cups of beef stock in. She’s doing it all wrong.”
    Betty laughed. Long ago Grammy had misread her pot roast recipe and put in two and a half quarts of red wine and a cup of beef stock instead of the other way around. She’d made it exactly the same way ever since, insisting she was right even though the result was a cabernet-colored slab of tough meat that the kids fed to Smelly under the dining room table. Smelly got a little drunk after a pot roast dinner, and would lean against the door jamb in the kitchen and howl, which would lead Grammy to think Smelly was having one of her “attacks” and put her in the bathtub to calm her down.
    â€œSmelly will love you for this,” Betty told Bobbie.
    â€œHow’s married life?” Bobbie said. She grabbed Grammy’s yellow flowered apron from the hook on the back of the kitchen door and tied it around her